Traditional methods of making mozzarella cheese typically start with pasteurizing cow's or buffalo's milk, adding cheese cultures, acidifying the milk to convert it into cheese milk, coagulating the cheese milk to obtain a coagulum, cutting the coagulum to obtain curds and whey, and separating the liquid whey from the solid cheese curd. The cheese curd is then heated, kneaded and stretched until it becomes a fibrous mass of heated, cheese. This fibrous mass of cheese may then be formed or extruded into a shape and cooled into a more rigid solid. The solid cheese can then be further processed depending on how the cheese will be used. For example if the cheese is being spread on pizza, the fibrous mass of heated cheese may be shaped into ribbons or blocks and cooled in brine. The cooled, hardened cheese may then be chopped into square or rectangular slabs that are supplied to dicing equipment, which cuts each slab into shredded cheese for pizza.
The process outlined above is commonly called the “pasta filata process.” Variations of the process may be used to make a variety of cheeses, such as mozzarella variety cheeses (which include traditional mozzarella cheeses), provolone cheeses, scamorze cheeses, pasta filata cheeses, and cheeses used on pizza (i.e., pizza cheeses), among other types and classes of cheeses.
In traditional pasta filata cheesemaking, the quantity of cheese obtained from milk may be increased by adding non-fat dry milk (NFDM) to the fluid milk before coagulation occurs. In an alternative approach, NFDM may also be added before, during, or after the heating, kneading, and stretching steps. However, in this alternative approach the milk proteins in the NFDM lack some of the structural and textural qualities of milk proteins in the cheese curd that have been altered by the enzymatic action of rennet. Among other problems, the NFDM proteins do not impart any significant stiffness or structure to the final cheese product, making it more difficult to cut and shred. Thus, there is a need for new processes of making NFDM that give the milk proteins in the composition qualities that are more similar to the treated proteins in traditional cheese curd. These and other needs are addressed by the present invention.